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Bejeweled 3 (PC)
by Red-Fox
Most people will have Bejeweled in some form or another. However, Bejeweled 3 tops all the other games. The premise for the game is still the same, and is extremely simple; Match the different gems together in either groups of 3, 4 or 5. Matching the gems in groups of four give you small power ups such as an explosion, while connecting 5 ... gems together will give you a magical cube that will destroy every gem of a certain type that is currently on the board.
The game starts with 4 different games modes, with 4 more modes to unlock by completing certain challenges within the different modes. The first mode is 'Classic mode'. Classic mode is very simple; you must connect the different gems together to score points to complete the level. This is repeated for every level until there are no more moves available, at which point the game ends.
The second game mode is Zen mode. Zen mode is a never ending game, which just allows you to keep playing the game until you get bored. The added feature of Zen mode is it adds various things that can help you relax while you are playing the game. This includes adding things like breathing modulation, which lights and darkens the board to tell you when to breathe in and out, adding ambient sounds while you're playing the game, displaying motivational mantras, and adding Binaural beats. All these are optional, which means you can just play a never ending game if you are bored.
The third game mode is Lightning mode. The game starts with one minute, and you try and get as many points as you can. You can add time to the next lightning round by connecting up special time gems or creating chains. If the time chains aren't matched in one of the rounds they become power gems, and the game ends once the time runs out and no more time gems have been collected.
The final game mode is Quest mode. Quest mode sets you different challenges to complete. For each challenge you complete you unlock a piece of an ancient relic, once all the pieces have been collected you can move on to the next relic. The game has different challenges, such as collecting 120 gems in a certain number of moves, or making sure you collect a balanced amount of both red and blue gems.
Each of these modes unlocks one of the secret modes by completed a certain challenge within the game mode. Poker mode is unlocked by completed 5 levels of the classic game. Poker mode gives you five turns to match gems. Once the 5 gems have been collected you are awarded points based on your "hand", such as a pair or three of a kind. at a certain point a Skull coin will appear on one of the hands. If your hand matches the hand with the skull coin the coin is flipped. If the coin lands on the clover you are safe and can play the next hand, but if it lands on the skull the game is over.
Once you complete 5 levels of Zen mode you unlock Butterfly mode. In Butterfly mode parts of the game board have different coloured butterflies which must be connected together with the gems of the same colour. The butterflies start at the bottom of the board and move up one row each turn. Should a butter fly reach the top of the board it is captured by the spider and the game is over.
If you get 100,000 points in Lightning mode you unlock Ice Storm. In Ice Storm towers of ice rise from the bottom of the screen to the top. The aim of the game is to keep joining together gems in order to destroy the columns of ice. Should all the columns of ice reach the top of the board, the game board will freeze and the game is over.
The final secret game mode is unlocked once you have collected the first relic in Quest mode, this mode is called Diamond Mine. This mode has a layer of dirt at the bottom of the screen that must be destroyed by matching the gems directly on top of it. As you destroy the dirt you collect gold and unlock buried gems. The aim of the game is to clear all of the dirt above the line before the time runs out.
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The Sims: Unleashed Expansion Pack (PC)
by charby
I've always been one for video games. I had a Megadrive when I was pretty young, followed by a few other Nintendo consoles, but I've also been quite a fan of games for the computer as well. I particularly enjoy simulation and strategy games, and so The Sims was something I was desperate to get when it first came out when I was about ten. ... Unfortunately, our computer wasn't advanced enough to play it and it couldn't be installed when my parents kindly bought it for me. I was heartbroken, but luckily my dad was planning on buying a new one for work fairly soon anyway, so I did get to play it after not too long. My love of The Sims then lasted a few years, with me buying all the expansion packs not long after they came out, as well as its sequel, Sims 2, and its expansions as well. Today's review will focus on the fifth expansion pack for The Sims, "Unleashed".
== The Sims Unleashed ==
The fifth expansion includes even more extra features to make your Sims gaming experience even more varied and fun. This time, the main addition is pets for your Sims. You can adopt dogs and cats from a pet shelter and these really become one of the family, taking up one of the eight Sim slots in your household. These house pets can learn skills and your Sims can train them, interact with them and even enter them into pet shows. You can also own a variety of other small animals, but these count as items and not as Simlike pets.
This expansion also opens up a new area for your Sims to explore: Old Town. This is actually an extension of the normal neighbourhood and expands the number of lots from ten to 40, if memory serves. Many of these are commercial lots that your Sims can visit, but it of course also means that you can have many more Sims families living in residential lots in the same neighbourhood. This is particularly good if you and other people in your house play The Sims as well as there's more room for you all to have a few different families to interact with.
Another interesting addition with Unleashed is your Sims' new ability to do gardening. You can place soil in your garden and grow plants using seeds bought in the Old Town. Your Sims can then eat the results or sell them for a small profit in the farmer's market. There are also five new career paths available if you're interested as well as the usual array of new objects.
== What I Thought ==
This expansion pack has loads of new features and makes the extras offered in "Livin' it Up" and "House Party" look insignificant, as much as I enjoyed them. The addition of a new area to visit as well as extra residential lots and playable Sims families made this a great expansion pack and really increased my enjoyment of the game. If you have all of the expansion packs that preceded it, your The Sims playing experience will have a lot of variation and will have grown massively since you first bought the original The Sims game without any expansions. I really liked the gardening feature as well as the ability to have and train pets, as although neither of these things are things that I enjoy in real life, being able to do so in The Sims was a fun and new experience for a game that I was growing more and more used to.
== Conclusion ==
This is a great expansion pack that adds a whole host of new features. The addition of a new area to explore, extra lots per neighbourhood, new careers, gardening and pets made it a great expansion pack when it came out and it is still a good one today if you're still inclined to play the original The Sims series. The fact that it's available for the ridiculously low price of £3.97 is astounding considering how many features this expansion offers, but altogether unsurprising considering its age and it having become near obsolete by The Sims 2 and 3. I still consider the original The Sims franchise to be a lot of fun and I wouldn't want anyone to be put off playing it based on its age, as it's still fun to play and has a very low price. This is a great game and so well worth it for that price if you have the original The Sims game already installed. Please check system requirements before purchasing.
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The Sims: Livin' It Up Expansion Pack (PC)
by Jenny_Summers
The Sims livin' it up is the first of several expansion packs released for the Sims game. It was released in 2000 and it provides new NPCs (non-playable characters), new items for you to decorate with and also the option to create more than one neighborhood. Although Livin' it up doesn't dramatically change the game play of the original ... Sims or introduce any big features unlike the later expansions, there is still plenty to make it a worthwhile addition to your Sims collection...
- The new NPCs -
The game adds several new NPCs. When one of your Sims meets an untimely end the Grim Reaper now visits to take him/her off to the afterlife. A loved one of the recently deceased can plead with the Grim Reaper for the return of their dearly beloved, although not always successfully, but hey who doesn't want the odd zombie Sim scattered about their town. The Reaper can also appear if you place more than 4 Jack-o-lanterns outside one of your houses and will ring the doorbell as if he's trick or treating. Another of the new NPCs also has a holidays theme, in livin' large you can now decorate for Christmas with the Christmas tree and plate of cookies. Then if all your Sims are in bed by 10, a certain jolly bearded fellow might come beaming in to munch on the cookies you've left next to the Christmas tree and leave some pressies under the tree.. If your like me and try and live out your Sims lives as realistically as possible then the ability to create Halloween and Christmas is great and definitely a nice little addition to the game. The next NPC is the Genie, who lives in another of the new items, the magic lamp. When rubbed the Genie will float out to grant your Sim a wish, be warned though the Genies magic is pretty temperamental and the consequences are sometimes disastrous. All the NPCs except the Grim Reaper are object linked, non more so that Servo the robot. At great expense your Sims can purchase servo to take care of things about the home, Servo is a maid, gardener and butler all in one. The last NPC is Sunny- the tragic clown, this character irritates me to no end, he spawns from a painting when your Sim's mood dips too low and will interrupt your Sim and wake it up until it's mood has normalized. It's a well made character don't get me wrong, I just find it unbelievably annoying, but then I'm not a huge fan of clowns anyway.
- New items-
As in all expansion packs for the Sims, there are of course several new items in livin' large with which to furnish your Sims houses. The most significant of these being the 'Vibromatic Heart Bed' which gives Sims a chance to get intimate and gives players a more reliable way to try for Sim babies. Other new items include a crystal ball that allows you to change your Sims personality by correctly answering a riddle and the concoction station that allows Sims to build logic skill by making potions, it can sometimes have some unexpected side affects.
I must say, when I purchased this expansion, it did take me a while to find many of the new items in the buy mode catalog and I was a little disappointed as I thought there were so few, but added to the new NPCs and new careers there definitely inst a lack of content, it seems there's just a little of everything rather than a lot of one specific aspect of the game.
- Other new bits and bobs-
Livin' large gives you more Sim skins, lots of new clothing options and several interesting new career choices for your Sims, including the option to become a musician or a journalist. The new careers however add very little to the game as you still can't follow your Sims to work and see what they get up to, but at least you'll have some new funny career descriptions to read!
Another nice little addition to the game is the new build mode objects, not only can you re-design all of your old Sims houses with the brand new wall papers and flooring, you can also now theme your builds with new retro, sci-fi and medieval themed objects for both buy and build mode. Something I really enjoyed, it was really fun to make goth Sims in a medieval style castle or futuristic Sims in a sci-fi house with a robot maid.
- My views overall -
If you like the Sims then this expansion is definitely a good buy. I have loved playing this game and still have it on my external hard-drive so I can play it when I feel in the mood for something a bit more easy going than the Sims 2 or 3.
The game is quite old now so would probably be quite hard to get hold of although it's always possible to source old games online especially through Amazon or E-bay. I have also seen the Sims ultimate collection online for as little as £10 with postage and that contains not only this expansion but all expansions ever released for the Sims.
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